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Below are the 18 most recent journal entries recorded in
mecurtin's InsaneJournal:
| Sunday, April 13th, 2008 | |
| 11:39 pm | Recs du jour: Stargate Atlantis Rodney/Teyla http://sardonicsmiley.livejournal.com/5 One Good Reason sardonicsmiley SGA Rodney/Teyla 5.8K Ronon decides who would be a good husband for Teyla. http://diluvian.livejournal.com/268 Polynomials and Fixed Points diluvian SGA McShep, others 3K Atlantis got a matchmaker program and did the math. http://siriaeve.livejournal.com/278 Tomorrow, We Will Be Better siriaeve SGA Rodney/Teyla 3K Teyla has a baby, and a lot of people to mourn. Rodney brings the tea. |
| 12:16 am | Recs du jour: Hardy Boys! in SGA & SV http://star-language.livejournal.com/39 The Mystery of the Missing Voices (Atlantis Boys Mysteries #1) winkingstar SGA McShep 2.5K Hardy Boys! And Sheppard knows what McKay's saying with his hands. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1456129/1/T The Great Airport Mystery LastScorpion SV CLex-y long A perfect Hardy Boys pastiche, with a missing chum and "said" banished. |
| Sunday, April 6th, 2008 | |
| 7:47 pm | Blogcomment record: Racism; Equal marriage Two comments left at Orcinus: 1. To the post on The threat of difference, which is mostly about Jonah Goldberg's statement that the "Darwin fish" is offensive: Dave: I have to disagree with you here: when in fact no gay marriage on the planet harms a single straight marriageSame-sex marriage harms traditional marriages two ways: 1) It threatens the closeted. To the Ted Haggards and Jim McGreeveys, same-sex marriage is a taunt: you didn't have to settle for the closet. Orson Scott Card's diatribes against same-sex marriage have this flavor: he says het marriage is intrinsically more difficult than gay marriage, so hets need to be rewarded or they won't do it. If you feel like you're in prison, seeing other people free really is a threat. 2) Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Traditional marriage involves one dominant person with full legal rights and a submissive person with lesser rights. Same-sex marriage is clearly between two people with the *same* legal rights, and there is no cue to say which partner is dominant or submissive. Same-sex marriage is *equal* marriage, and thus really does threaten traditional unequal marriage by being a counter-example. In other words: cats and dogs, sleeping together, mass hysteria. 2. In That dialogue on race: the hard part, about the difficulty of talking about racial issues in America, "Jaqueline Quinn" linked to a ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} coffeeandink post on talking about race in fandom. I wrote:From another part of the same internet conversation Jackie is referencing: Baby-stepping away from racism: A guide for white people. Most important in this particular case are baby-steps #2 and #4: "Shut up" -- it's not about *you*; and "Act in a *supporting* role". One of the many take-home I've learned from the racism conversation among sf/media fans is that references to someone's "tone" (on the internet, at least) are almost always the red flag of Fail. "I would have agreed with her about racism in X if it weren't for her *tone*" -- that usually translates to: "My privilege, let me show you it! My feelings should come first!" |
| Saturday, April 5th, 2008 | |
| 3:56 pm | Down to the sea in ships I just realized that I have had an experience that is probably quite rare for people under 60, and almost unknown to anyone born after 1970. I have crossed the Atlantic in a ship. Three times, in fact. In the fall of 1964, when I was 8, my family travelled to France to live for a year in Aix-en-Provence (Fulbright scholarship). We travelled on the SS United States. I remember it as being quite excitingly rocky -- there was at least one meal where my father and I were just about the only passengers in the madly-tilting dining room, which had all kinds of fascinating fittings to keep the food & place settings from flying off the table. In the late spring of 1965, we returned to the US on the maiden voyage of the liner Michelangelo. I don't remember all that much about the trip, though the ship was extremely stylish, especially compared to the metallic United States. Not that style is everything -- my mother remembers the crew sweaping the carpets in the hallways with brooms instead of vacuum cleaners, which was rather ineffective. In the late summer of 1968, when I was 12, we returned to France for a year in Dijon as part of a faculty-exchange program. We travelled over on SS France. This was a much more leisurely trip than the one on the United States, but frankly all I remember is running along the stairs and gangways with the children we made friends with on the trip. As I think about it, there's a distinctive smell of these ocean liners: cold, salty, oily, and metallic. It's not a smell we get on the ferry boats I've ridden many times since, it's both brinier and more engine-like, with none of the fish or seaweed smells you get on the ocean nearer shore. When we returned to the US in June 1969 my father, whose leg was in a cast, travelled on the France and my mother took my brother & me home by air, via Finland (where we shopped for furniture) and Iceland (because Icelandic was the cheapest way to fly across the Atlantic at the time, and our plane was delayed in Reykjavik for an extra day). And that was pretty much the end of the transatlantic liner era: the United States is anchored immovably in Philadelphia, the Michelangelo was scrapped in 1991, and the France is being scrapped as I write. Plenty of ships cross the Atlantic still, of course, but there are almost no passengers: long sea voyages are for work or for play, but not for *travel*. I'm curious, for those of you who've been on cruises and other forms of ocean transport: is the movement of those ships enough that when you get to land, the land seems to go up-and-down until you get used to it again? It was very noticeable and amusing for me as a child after the transatlantic crossings -- the United States took about 4 days, the others I guess about 6 days each. |
| Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 | |
| 10:34 pm | Recs du jour: Stargate Atlantis http://khohen1.livejournal.com/648932.h John khohen1 SGA McShep 3K John is Dexter. http://ellex42.livejournal.com/49788.ht the Shark and Shiver trilogies magus-minor, ellex SGA McShep long - six stories linked from this post, but the first 5 are each quite short. John hides his love of the knife; Rodney finds out; sharks can't stop swimming. ------- http://www.furholt.net/elaynas_den/_McS Adventures in an Astrophysicist's Life Elayna SGA McShep 24K Dr. McKay meets a stripper who drags him into a life of action-adventure. ------- http://smittywing.livejournal.com/42391 Hero for a New Age smittywing SGA gen, Rodney/Ronon 12K Rodney makes Ronon into a comics fan. -------- http://www.improvidence.net/visiting_ho Visiting Hours lilysaid SGA McShep 12K Sheppard is imprisoned inside a mountain; McKay is his official visitor. |
| Saturday, March 29th, 2008 | |
| 9:50 pm | Rec du jour: Stargate Atlantis http://trickster.org/speranza/cesper/we Weddings, Plural, and a Yak Cesperanza SGA McShep 17.5K "either you let yourself go to waste, or you pick a person to care about and start taking care of them." |
| 9:49 am | History of filk In the course of a discussion on the slash-and-the-patriarchy posts, madfilkentist noted that filk fans are a roughly even mix of male and female. lil_shepherd said that filkers tend not to be split between media fandom (which as a whole has always been about half female) and sf fandom (historically mostly male).I'm betting one of you *waves vaguely at internets* can talk insightfully about the gender ratio in filker fandom at various periods, and about the "feeder" groups for filk. For instance, it's my vague impression that filk fandom has more overlap with the SCA and later LARPing than either media fandom or sf fandom -- filking, SCA, and LARPing all attract people who like to perform, one way or another. |
| Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 | |
| 9:14 pm | Recs du jour: Stargate Atlantis mcsmooches http://community.livejournal.com/mcsmoo Oasis thingswithwings SGA McShep, OT4 900 John and Ronon thought that Teyla and Rodney died in the Wraith base, Teyla and Rodney thought that John and Ronon had died in the hive ship. They were all wrong. http://community.livejournal.com/mcsmoo Moonlight and Mickey Finn thegrrrl2002 SGA McShep 2.5K Sheppard was given a drugged drink. Rodney is strong. http://community.livejournal.com/mcsmoo Not With a Bang toft-froggy SGA/Real People, sorta McShep 1.3K "Queen" guitarist Brian May really did just get a PhD in astrophysics. |
| 2:37 pm | So, there's this thing we call "batshit" and omg, it's everywhere. Pro batshit: Sigma is a group of pro SF writers who are "advising" the government about terrorism, among other things. For instance, Larry Niven: Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.No-one will be surprised to hear that Jerry Pournelle is involved, too. Fan batshit: Not only is Joss Whedon sexist & racist, he rapes his wife. The writer is part of an Australian "radical feminist" collective of some sort with the person who claims that the guys in slash stories always get "turned straight" at the end (a post in which a few raisins of accuracy are embedded in a great pudding of WTF). Now, this is the Internets, so there's more than enough solo batshittery to go around. But I think that in both these cases a type of collective, mutually-reinforcing batshit is being nurtured. It might be useful to find out what factors encourage this sort of development, and how to recognize that it's happening when you're inside it. I should note that the prognosis for the rad-fems-from-Oz is much better than it is for Sigma, because the former are younger, poorer, and have no access to people in positions of power. They might get better; I don't have much hope for the SF writers. |
| Monday, March 24th, 2008 | |
| 9:59 pm | Recs du jour: Stargate Atlantis/Pern http://community.livejournal.com/sga_fl On the Wings of Imagination xparrot SGA/Pern gen 3.7K Teyla the Harper drags Rodney the Scribe to the Hatching Grounds. http://xparrot.livejournal.com/78427.ht With Healing in His Wings xparrot SGA/Pern gen 6.9K Rider R'dney and his bronze Shepparth undermine civilization, again. |
| Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 | |
| 10:15 pm | misc No fanfic today, I just... didn't. 1. isiscolo has a poll up about "friending". In the comments, lizbee reports that one of the big deals on the recent DW anonmeme was accusations of "illicit reading" of unlocked entries. Oh, *humans*, why so dumb?2. lizbee later muses that "hardcore OTP shipping is a mind-altering drug", which I agree with totally -- including the parts with addiction, mood swings, and your nose dropping off. And yet I cannot stop with the McShep -- is OT4 methadone? Or am I fooling myself?3. esorlehcar talks about phrases I could happily never see again. I add: In political discussions, "I know it's not PC, but ..." [= my privilege, let me show you it. Or else!]. 4. thingswithwings posts large but fascinating SGA caps. Oh, *John*. |
| 9:04 pm | Question about European social & religious history Dear Euro-friends (or other knowledgable persons): One of the most significant differences between Europe & the US right now is that the USans are extremely religious by comparison. This is particularly striking because most USans have ancestors from Europe, speak a European language, and have a substantially European ("Western") culture -- we think of pre-1600 European history as "our" history, for instance. What is your understanding of the time frame in which European religious practice faded away? What historical events were most important? Do you think European religiousity was similar to USan levels before WWI? WWII? Or did the change start further back? I am currently reading James Sheehan's Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe. He does *not* mention religion (or its lack) as being a factor in the post-WWII transforation of Europe into a civil state, defined by non-military institutions; do you think religion was involved? What do you (or the older people in your family) think about what caused the change? References to sources available in English are especially appreciated, of course. |
| Thursday, March 20th, 2008 | |
| 10:04 pm | Recs du jour: Stargate Atlantis OT4 http://isagel.livejournal.com/125504.ht Stuff isagel SGA OT4 4.6K A pregnant woman has Needs. http://community.livejournal.com/ronon_ (Im)possible Universes wojelah SGA OT4ish gen 2K Ronon knows that change doesn't always come with a warning. |
| 5:05 pm | GIMP tutorial? At several people's suggestion, I downloaded GIMP. Point me to your favorite online GIMP tutorial site! |
| 12:22 pm | SGA meta, possible teeny spoilers, pr0n request Re: Teyla in the last couple eps of S4 ( spoilers for those eps, duh ) Many of you may have seen ( an inspiring and not IMHO all that spoilery pic of Sheppard from S5 filming ) |
| 11:45 am | My tl;dr life I use this icon in the hopes that it will inspire me to be heroic though cranky. The cranky is a given. 1. If you couldn't afford Photoshop, what would you use to make images for web pages? 2. Did Rebecca Mott, Radicaler Than Thou Feminist ever say where & what she'd been reading that she thought most slash ended up with the guys turning straight? 3. What did Our Russian Overlord say in his LJ post? 4. Is there any way to do bulk upload of icons to IJ? 5. I had a dream about a garden pond water-circulator system that was run by wind power. Does someone make this? If not, why not? |
| Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 | |
| 9:58 pm | Recs du jour: Stargate Atlantis http://catwalksalone.livejournal.com/20 Five Things Rodney McKay learns about John Sheppard Whilst Naked catwalksalone SGA McShep 1.3K Details of John's body. http://tzzzz.livejournal.com/4146.html Mona Lisa Box tzzzz SGA/Terminator 14K Rodney McKay is one of the geniuses who created Skynet. John Sheppard is sent back in time to find him. |
| 7:58 am | Packing list Having read what our Russian overlords think of us (shout-out to lj user=russianswinga, who did the translation), I realize I need to get my stuff packed, just in case. I have an IJ account already. I need to: 1. copy my CSS from LJ and put it on IJ, so the two places look the same 1b. upload icons to IJ. Is there any way to do this in one fell swoooooooop? 1c. include noindex, no follow meta tags. I'm trying by adding [meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow, noarchive" /> [meta name="googlebot" content="noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet" /> via the options page. 2. Start double-posting -- is there an easy way to do that? Or should I just do what I do anyway, write my posts in a notepad file and now paste it into two places? 2a. DL blog2blog, figure out how to use it. 3. How do I read my LJ flist from IJ? Is there a way to make my LJflist into a feed of some sort that shows up on IJ? Help me, Obi Wan! I'll add to this list as I think of things. |